Families of Marylanders killed by police rally for reform as Chauvin trial looms
Pope meets with top Shiite cleric in call for tolerance
Ever since her brother died at the hands of Baltimore police during what started out as a routine traffic stop in 2013, Tawanda Jones has been a formidable force in pushing for local police reform.
The Baltimore preschool teacher has led rallies, vigils and Zoom workshops every Wednesday since the death of Tyrone West, honoring his memory by calling for changes in policy she believes would increase police accountability for its dealings with the public.
On Saturday, her efforts intersected with a nationwide movement for broader reforms.
With a pivotal trial in the case of George Floyd set to begin in Minnesota on Monday, Jones, 41, helped lead a caravan of cars through the streets of Baltimore, then an emotional 90-minute rally in front of City Hall in which she and the family members of five other Marylanders killed by police in recent years demanded a fairer, more responsive system.
The event was among the dozens held in cities across the country as a prelude to the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes before he died on May 25, 2019.
Mass Action 4 George Floyd, a Bostonbased racial justice organization, coordinated the coast-to-coast campaign, which began at 2 p.m.
“This isn’t just about my brother, Tyrone West,” Jones said, microphone in hand, as a crowd of about 50 looked on in the plaza on
Holliday Street. “It’s about all the families who are affected and traumatized by police violence. The system is not just. Police have been getting away with murder. And it’s got to stop.”
Cars started gathering on a windy afternoon along Ednor Road in Northeast Baltimore, less than a mile from where West lost his life. Hip-hop music blared, activists plastered signs and wrote messages on car windows, and horns began honking as about 20 cars started their noisy single-file journey toward City Hall.
Jones set up a sound system, then began the chant that has become familiar at West Wednesdays, the gatherings she has led for 398 consecutive weeks: “We won’t stop until killer cops are in cell blocks.”
The crowd that assembled heard the stories of Black citizens who have died at police hands in Maryland — 20-year-old Jarrell Gray of Frederick in 2009, 46-yearold Anthony Anderson of Baltimore in 2012, 49-year-old Leonard Shand of New Carrollton in Prince George’s County — as told, often in emotional terms, by family members they left behind.
Gray’s uncle, Ken Brown, recited a poem in honor of Gray, who died after police who had been called to a home to answer a noise complaint twice used a taser — an “electronic noose,” in Brown’s telling — to subdue him.
“This system of injustice, as I call it, is doing what it was designed to do,” Brown said.
Anderson’s daughter-in-law, Nicole Pettiford, spoke of how police, suspecting a drug deal, threw Anderson to the pavement in a parking lot, causing the rib and spleen injuries that killed him.
Shand’s sister, Tracy, recounted how police officers, summoned to a Starbucks where an employee had said Shand was behaving in a threatening manner, ended up shooting him dozens of times.
Police officials defended officers’ actions in each case, and while multiple officers were disciplined, none faced criminal charges.
The speakers saw those as issues that could be resolved if laws guaranteeing fuller transparency can be adopted — one reason all spoke out on behalf of bills making their way through the Maryland General Assembly that would grant more public oversight of police behavior.
Each speaker backed repeal of the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights — Jones called it “the Killer Bill of Rights” — which affords broad legal protections for officers accused of misconduct, and some spoke on behalf of a change in the Maryland Public Information Act to make police complaints more easily available to the public.
Jones said the officers responsible for her brother’s death — all still on the force — have never faced full legal accountability for their actions. She’s calling for a reopening of his case.
With jury selection about to begin for Chauvin’s trial, she said, it’s an essential time to shine a light on the problem of police brutality.
“While the whole world is watching, our goal is to be heard,” she said.
Nobody asked me, but, if I were looking to make a few bucks, I’d get a cicada cleaning service organized in time for the coming invasion. A leaf blower, an industrial vacuum cleaner — the biggest sucker you can find — and you’ll be in business. There will be demand to remove thousands of husks left all over suburbia by 17-year cicadas once they molt. I observed cicada cleaning businesses in 1987 and again during the last emergence. They appeared to be profitable, but as they say in the market: Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Nobody asked me, but, despite his ancestral ties to Hungary, Rep. Andy Harris’ support of the country’s right-wing leader continues to be weird and troubling on the way to appalling. Maryland’s only Republican in Congress, Harris recently received a medal of appreciation from the government of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s strongman prime minister widely viewed as a democratic backslider. A few days ago, Orban pulled out of a center-right coalition of European political parties that appeared ready to expel him because of his increasing authoritarianism. Under the rule of Orban and his Fidesz party, Hungary has eliminated judicial independence and quashed press and academic freedoms while embracing nationalist policies. The parliament of the European Union declared Orban’s government a “systemic threat to the rule of law.” So why would an American congressman want to support this guy, as Harris has done repeatedly? He’s been such a supporter that the Hungarian ambassador gave Harris a medal known as the Officer’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit. I guess if you’re a supporter of Donald Trump like Harris, it’s no leap to admire Viktor Orban. Imagine: Once upon a time, Republicans wanted to promote democracy around the world, not make cozy with backsliders.
Nobody asked me, but it would have been an inspiration to see the state of Maryland have “the equitable distribution of vaccines” as a priority from the start and not after a load of complaints about how the shots were allocated. It’s why diversity in “the room where it happens” is essential in all things.
Speaking of COVID-19 vaccines: In Maryland’s dopey decentralized registration system, requiring navigation through multiple websites to get an appointment for a shot, sharpies at MedStar Health came up with a simple system: “Sign up and we’ll let you know when the vaccine is available.” Once your name is on the waiting list, they don’t forget about you; I received two reminders and then an invitation to book a shot. That was my experience, anyway. Maryland should have had a central registration site with the same model: Get on a waiting list, get updates by email; when doses are available within a few miles of your home — at a pharmacy, hospital, senior center, mass-vax site — you get an invitation.
Such a system would have worked, if you ask me, but nobody did.
Nobody asked me, but allow me to make the following observation: You know spring is in the offing, and that Passover is coming, when the five-pound boxes of matzos show up at Giant.
Nobody asked me, and I know it’s not kosher, but a little grated Romano never hurt a matzo ball.
Quick story: Years ago, at a Catholic-Jewish Seder in the undercroft of St. Vincent de Paul Church, a fellow Catholic named McCloud had matzos for the first time. I asked how he liked it. He liked it just fine. “But,” he said, “makes me wish I had a little Cheez Whiz.”
Nobody asked me, but progressives pushing mass transit in Maryland might want to check out the American Society of Civil Engineers’ annual grades for infrastructure. They just came out. Maryland got a C overall, but a D-plus in mass transit. That could help those lobbying the General Assembly to come up with the $2 billion the Mass Transit Administration needs over the next six years for its maintenance backlog.
Overall, the ASCE gave Maryland a grade of C on roads, bridges, aviation, stormwater, waste water, trash, rail, energy, drinking water and ports. The state scored a C-minus on dams, and though the ASCE said Maryland does an above average job at maintenance, the report identified 92 “high hazard” dams across the state. If breached, they would pose a serious threat to people and property.
Hey, I know: Civil engineers are always looking for work so, naturally, they would advocate more spending on infrastructure. But, even if half right, the report affirms the need to go big over the next decade. A comprehensive infrastructure plan will not only make the country safer and more efficient, it would put to work thousands of people who will have a tough time finding jobs in the post-pandemic economy.
Rest in peace, Joe Altobelli, and thanks for the memories of Baltimore’s last World Series championship team, the one you managed in 1983. That was way too long ago. There are thousands of Orioles fans who since then have grown up and raised families, and who would weep a keg if their kids or grandkids could have the same experience some season soon.
Nobody asked me, but if you want to get in the mood for St. Patrick’s Day, seek out “Boffyflow and Spike” by the Chieftains (on their 1989 album, “A Chieftains Celebration”) and play it loud with the windows open. It’s cosmic.
PLAINS OF UR, Iraq — Pope Francis walked through a narrow alley in Iraq’s holy city of Najaf for a historic meeting with the country’s top Shiite cleric Saturday, and together they delivered a powerful message of peaceful coexistence in a country still reeling from back-toback conflicts over the past decade.
In a gesture both simple and profound, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani welcomed Francis into his spartan home. The 90-yearold cleric, one of the most eminent among Shiites worldwide, afterward said Christians should live in peace in Iraq and enjoy the same rights as other Iraqis. The Vatican said Francis thanked al-Sistani for having “raised his voice in defense of the weakest and most persecuted” during some of the most violent times in Iraq’s recent history,
Later, the pope attended a gathering of Iraqi religious leaders in the deserts near a symbol of the country’s ancient past — the 6,000-year-old ziggurat in the Plains of Ur, also the traditional birthplace of Abraham, the biblical patriarch revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims. The joint appearance by figures from across Iraq’s sectarian spectrum was almost unheard of, given their communities’ often bitter divisions.
Together, the day’s events gave symbolic and practical punch to the central message of Francis’ visit, calling for Iraq to embrace its diversity. It is a message he hopes can preserve the place of the thinning Christian population in the tapestry. At a Mass the pope celebrated
later in Baghdad, emotional worshippers sang hymns, ululated and shouted “Viva la Papa!,” or “Long live the pope.”
Still, his message faces a tough sell in a country where every community has been traumatized by sectarian bloodshed and discrimination and where politicians have tied their power to sectarian interests.
In al-Sistani, Francis sought the help of an ascetic, respected figure immersed in those sectarian identities but is also a powerful voice standing above them.
Al-Sistani is one of the most senior clerics in Shiite Islam, deeply revered among Shiites in Iraq and worldwide. His rare but powerful political interventions have helped shape present-day Iraq. Their meeting in al-Sistani’s humble home, the first
between a pope and a grand ayatollah, was months in the making.
Early Saturday, the 84-year-old pontiff, traveling in a bulletproof MercedesBenz, pulled up along Najaf ’s narrow Rasool Street, which culminates at the goldendomed Imam Ali Shrine, one of the most revered sites in Shiite Islam.
As a masked Francis entered the doorway of al-Sistani’s home, a few white doves were released in a sign of peace.
A religious official in Najaf called the meeting “very positive.” He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief media.
The official said al-Sistani, who normally remains seated for visitors, stood to greet Francis at the door of his room — a rare honor. The pope removed his shoes
before entering al-Sistani’s room and was served tea and a plastic bottle of water.
At one point in their 40-minute meeting, the pope gingerly cradled the ayatollah’s hands in his own as al-Sistani leaned in speaking, according to footage aired on Lebanon’s LBC. They sat close to one another, without masks. Al-Sistani spoke for most of the meeting, the official said.
The official said there was some concern about the fact that the pope had met with so many people the day before. Francis has received the coronavirus vaccine but al-Sistani has not.
In a statement issued by his office afterward, al-Sistani affirmed that Christians should “live like all Iraqis, in security and peace and with full constitutional rights.” He pointed out the “role that the
religious authority plays in protecting them, and others who have also suffered injustice and harm in the events of past years.”
Iraqis cheered the meeting, and the prime minister responded by declaring March 6 a National Day of Tolerance and Coexistence in Iraq.
“We welcome the pope’s visit to Iraq and especially to the holy city of Najaf and his meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,” said Najaf resident Haidar Al-Ilyawi. “It is a historic visit and hope it will be good for Iraq and the Iraqi people.”
Later, Pope Francis evoked the common reverence for Abraham to speak against religious violence at the interfaith gathering at the Plains of Ur.
“From this place, where faith was born, from the land
of our father Abraham, let us affirm that God is merciful and that the greatest blasphemy is to profane his name by hating our brothers and sisters,” Francis said. “Hostility, extremism and violence are not born of a religious heart: they are betrayals of religion.”
Interfaith forums are a staple of Francis’ international trips. But its sectarian breadth was startling in Iraq: From Shiite and Sunni Muslims to Christians, Yazidis and Zoroastrians and tiny, ancient and esoteric faiths like the Kakai.
The Vatican said Iraqi Jews were invited to the event but did not attend, without providing further details. Iraq’s ancient Jewish community was decimated in the 20th century by violence and mass emigration fueled by the Arab-Israeli conflict.